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November 21, 2015

Spreading Western values?

A few hundred years ago, since the scientific revolution, the age of enlightenment, and the industrial revolution, an explosive progress has taken place in prosperity, health, freedom, and justice. This progress begin in Western countries and is now spreading across the world. This development is a long term process. There is still much poverty and injustice in the world and thus much further progress needed.

Some skeptics think that spreading the values and principles which have contributed to such great progress in the Western world actually comes down to spreading Western values. Therefore, it would be a way to establish Western dominance.
I have an opposite view. By letting humanism, equality, freedom, reason, and justice be spread across the world these determinants of progress will not be reserved for the Western world alone but be granted to all the world.

Precisely by allowing them to blossom all over the world they will become less of an exclusive Western property but a property of all people. This will help us see that there is nothing inherently Western to these values and principles. They are inherently human.